It looks like we are cruising across land. We are in the Okeechobee Waterway part of the Intracoastal. All my life I have called it the Intercoastal and today, I realize I’ve always pronounced it wrong. John admits that he has too so I asked him if he’d rather have intercourse or intracourse 😂🤭.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway

We spent Tuesday night in Labelle and 4-17-19 we are headed to Roland Martin’s fish camp outside of Lake Okeechobee. For the first 20 or so miles of this waterway, we saw houses and boats. Today, we’ve seen mostly pastures and a couple of orange groves and lots of sugar cane. It’s cool up on the fly bridge but the sunshine is sometimes intense. We look like aliens!

There are 3 locks on the way to Lake Okeechobee and 2 locks to get to the east side of Florida. These either lift or lower your boat to the water on the other side of the lock gate. When you get the green light to enter, one parks the boat against the wall and hangs onto the lines of the side as the opposite gate opens either to let water rush in or rush out depending on if the boat needs to be raised or lowered. This requires about 20 straight minutes of muscle power to keep the boat next to the wall. Notice the watermarks on the wall. The boat will be that high when finished.

(This is a screenshot, not a video)

We spent the night at Roland Martin’s fish camp with the occasional alligator swimming by and a squawking bird that woke us up all through the night. What we should have realized is that the bird was telling us,

Beware, Beware…..

‘Cause the next morning we started across the black waters of Lake Okeechobee knowing it was only 4-5 feet for most of the crossing. The channel on this big lake is often narrow and it was windy so when John was setting the Autocruise we drifted out of the channel and over into water less than 3 foot and

BLAM!

our propellers hit limestone and we were wounded. We limped across the lake at about 5 knots because the boat was vibrating so hard. We made it to the American Boat yard and they let us spend the night in hopes that they would have time on Friday to haul us out. This is a great place as they hauled us out, changed the props and had us on our way for $800! John said that Shalimar marina charges $1800 just for the haul out!

One of my favorite marinas was only 5 miles away and we arrived at Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart FL about an hour before some torrential rains. It is indeed Good Friday. We were blessed and wishing you a Happy Easter.

We will leave on Monday to head north…..great adventures and unknown parts to Happy Ours.